Open Circuits

These should be projects or links to projects that are open, at a minimum in the sense that there is enough information so that others can reproduce the project. Lets stay away from sites that are just show cases without the details.
In no particular order:

Open-hardware camera system

AXIOM introduces the first professional, extendable and modular cinema camera platform entirely based on free software, open design and open hardware.

This project was created by film-makers who were fed up with the expensive and limited tools they had to work with every day. The desire to have devices/technology without limitations, that are tailored exactly to the film-makers needs sparked the creation of the apertus° project and still keeps it going many years later.
The created technology will be freely adaptable, just as the generated knowledge are made freely available. The AXIOM product line is the result of the ongoing endeavor to redefine the industry well beyond the DIY garages and hobbyist labs the project started in: to build the very first open digital cinema camera from scratch and to create a platform for film-makers, creative industry professionals, artists and enthusiasts.

SD Card Bathroom Scale

On SD Card Bathroom Scale project I hacked a cheap commercial digital bathroom scale, for write (log) my weight variations over time, on a memory SD Card. I write the information (time + weight) on a comma separated values (CSV) file (weight.csv) so I can quickly build a graph using OpenOffice.

N8VEM Home Brew Computing Project

The N8VEM Single Board Computer (SBC) is a home brew Z80 small computer project. It is made in the style of vintage computers of the mid to late 1970's and early 1980's using a mix of classic and modern technologies. Its purpose is to entertain through education. It is intended to be used to teach and promote principles of electronic computer design. It is a solely non-profit educational project and is not intended for any commercial application. Please see the wiki for detailed information on the N8VEM project.
N8VEM Mailing ListN8VEM wiki

The project video shows a fridge timer which can be set to trigger during high battery voltage sunny days so the defrost cycle never uses valuable battery power. It is switchable to act like a regular defrost timer for long cloudy stretches of time, like winter.

Scoring Machine for Fencing

This is an open source hardware and software design for a 3-weapon (foil/epee/sabre) scoring machine. Scoring equipment need not be expensive & should be made affordable & accessible to anyone wishing to enjoy the sport of Fencing. Members are urged to submit any new design contributions to this group & to the GNU. All firmware and schematic updates are secured under the GPL agreement. For complete design details see Join the GNU-GPL-3WT "Open Source Fencing Machine" forum.

Open Source Disability Gadgets

"Gear and software for people with disabilities is usually ... hard or impossible to repair it, or get anyone to repair it. We need to hack the model for accessibility tools! With a culture of open source designs, Instructables, wikis, and blogs" -- Open Source Disability Gadgets: DIY for PWD

µWatch

Open Source Circuits Magazine

Defunct website.

- Anykits publishes an open source magazine with quite a few, application oriented circuits. It contains schematics, parts list and PCB illustrations.
The best part is that its formated for print and available as regular PDF.

An open, inexpensive Foreign Exchange System design with a USB interface. A small board based on a Microchip PIC 18F2550 microcontroller (to handle USB) and a Silicon Laboratories Si3210 chip (complete SLIC codec for microphone and speaker; also generates the high-voltage to ring the bell). You plug an ordinary analog telephone into the RJ11 jack on the board, and plug the board into a USB port on a Linux computer running Asterix.

Motherboards that Run Linux

There are many fascinating and surprisingly small boards that are capable of running Linux.
Some of them -- such as the Linuxstamp, the Elphel camera, the Balloon board, LART, etc. -- are open hardware.

POV scrolling display with an RF connection to a mini-itx computer and weatherstation. Project is built out of 384 discrete red LEDs. Display shows time and date, sunrise/sunset time and outdoor/indoor weather.

The PINGPONG-CDC project is a homebrew USB frequency hopping spread spectrum RF modem (FHSS). The modem is based on the Microchip 18F2550 and the Semtec XE1205 RF module. The module does not include a MAC or protocol layer. That is what this project implements. The project demonstrates how to write a FHSS MAC layer and use USB to interface it with a PC through CDC and WinUSB.
Since the protocol is not hard-wired, it is easy to change the software to experiment with different protocols.
A utility for pairing and configuring modems is included. The schematic, firmware, and host C++ software is provided.

A simple RS232 example project that takes all the power it needs from the serial port. Use it to power your microcontroller and communicate between serial port and microcontroller. Takes advantage of the fact that pc serial ports will accept 0-5V rather than the RS232 standard of around negative 10V to positive 10V. Very convenient - no external power required! Note that you may use either a 5.1V Zener or a 5V regulator.

"#6" (the son of Chalk Roach)
is a ultra simple microcontroller development board for Atmel ATmega32 = 16MHz, 2KB SRAM, 16KB Flash

LED and POV displays

Led displays range from a battery and an LED which light up ( cool!, add a magnet and you have an led throwie ) to microcontroller led projects, either Smart Led ( Led with a microcontroller so that it blinks, reacts to the environment, or shifts color ) or Led Arrays ( or led matrix ) that do simple graphics and or play games, or POV devices where what you see depends upon you persistance of vision ( which can include some led arrays ). You can probably dig up more using these terms in google.

Our Own Projects

24" Wall Clock A really big wall clock. Why? Well, cause it might look cool? Probably not. But we do use GPS to get the time! Groovy.

Program your appliances to operate automatically in conjunction with your weekly and daily schedule, manually turn them on/off from your PC or use the controller as a process ON/OFF controller to regulate some kind of physical variable to the desired value.

Battery charger

the Open Graphics Project

the Open Graphics Project
a project started by chip-designer Timothy Miller.
His goal, along with the rest of the project, known as the “Open Graphics Foundation” is to make a 3D accelerated video card which is fully documented, free-licensed, and open source.
See the Open Graphics wiki.

The Amiga floppy project:
designing, building, and programming an adapter to allow PCs to read from Amiga floppies.
"This is really designed to be a community project(hence the blog with progress reports)."

This project is the building of an external USB amiga floppy drive controller. It sits between the USB port on a Windows PC, and a regular PC floppy drive. It will allow the PC to create .ADF images from an amiga floppy disk. This device is based on a Parallax SX28 microcontroller, uses Ramtron FRAM memory for temporary track storage, and uses another Parallax component for the USB interface.

openEyes

RepRap

RepRap is an open source project to create a 3d printer or fabber machine. There is tons of information available on its website. The current iteration is a 3 axis cartesian robot with 2 extruder heads: a Thermoplastic head that extrudes plastics like HDPE, ABS, and CAPA, and a support material head that extrudes a water soluble material to support the build process.

The Biollante project is a kind of RepRap that uses a 6 axis Stewart platform.
Can devices from a mechanical model library be fabbed with RapRap?
The article "Self-reproducing machines" goes even further than just 6 identical parts -- it suggests that "self-reproducing machines composed of many identical microscale modules" may be a better design than the original RepRap design where just about every part is unique.

"This is the meta-problem of engineering: Design a machine that can design other machines." -- Hod Lipson[13]

TwentyDollarWikiDevice

Challenge: Build a Wiki Device with a parts cost of no more than twenty dollars which is usable as a portable wiki. Include feature to make it compatible with a desktop or laptop computer's PersonalWiki, with a connector allowing this use.
--
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TwentyDollarWikiDevice

These are three boards that I designed for a specific project and found them very useful. Each of these boards uses the phoenix contact plugable terminal blocks. The 50-pin breakout board is for a 50-pin ribbon cable. The LEM breakout board is for LEM AC/DC current sensor. The power supply breakout board is for a +5v +/-15v power supply.

Is there a simple way for my Java application to fetch the latest camera image in an Array of pixel values?

OpenHDCapture: capture (analog) High Definition Video 1280x720 at 30fps, and convert to some digital format to stream over USB. (Rather than a lot of expensive electronics to directly produce tightly compressed video, it has very little compression to reduce the cost of the hardware and the amount of CPU effort to uncompress it while watching live video).

robot

The PICmicro 16F628 decodes Wiegand protocol coming from card reader.
If the card matches one of the 40 cards in EEPROM, it turns on the light (opens the door).
Schematic and source code published under GNU terms.

ComClone2 is a DIY clone of the industry-standard "party line" production intercom system as first introduced by Clearcom and now sourced by many other vendors. This intercom system is widely used in both live show(theatrical, music, etc.) and video production. Website provides complete construction information including PC board, etc.

Minimig

This project is a homebrew 12bit 24KHz homebrew USB soundcard based on a pic 18f2550 and a few Microchip analog parts.
The project is based on the Microchip USB framework, but the core audio processing is written from scratch.
The card is a duel Audio 1.0 + generic interface composite device with the generic interface being handled by WinUSB.
The schematic, card firmware, and host C++ software is provided.

An acceptable third generation PostScript printer

"Ask the Guru: A Third-Generation Printer"
article by Don Lancaster 1990
http://www.tinaja.com/glib/guru60.pdf
lists specifications for
"An acceptable third generation PostScript printer."
Would this be a good "open hardware" project ?

The Kestrel is a grass-roots computer design employing half-way modern technology, where *EVERYTHING* is documented openly.
Other goals:
Instant on, (nearly) instant off.
Fun to build.
Fun to use.
Fun to expand.
The creation of a vibrant and healthy user and developer community, capable of supporting itself on both software AND hardware fronts.

flash downloaders

Open Source USB programmer

Open Programmer is an open source USB programmer for PIC micros, ATMEL micros, I2C EEPROMS, generic I2C/SPI devices. It's based on a 18F2550.
Open Programmer home page.
Usbpicprog is another open source USB pic programmer for PIC 10F, 12F, 16F and 18F devices, for Windows Mac and Linux
Usbpicprog

The WikiNode project tries to link every wiki in the world together.
Our "WikiNode" links to closely-related wiki (and their WikiNode links back).

If you want to talk about something that is not quite on-topic here at Open Circuits
(say, "desktop PC case modding", or "embedded Linux programming"), our WikiNode helps you find another wiki where people love to talk about that exact topic.
The corresponding WikiNode on each of those wiki helps people who want to talk about "open hardware" to discover this wiki.

Tide Clock uses the low-power LinuxStamp board (another OpenCircuits project) to calculate daily tides at almost any location. Tide predictions are displayed on a bar graph using 12 motorized lead-screws to move the 'bars'.

Sun SPOTs

This Java-based system is an ARM920T 180MHz processor, 4Mbyte Flash, 512Kbyte pSRAM and 802.15.4 radio transceiver (TI CC2420). See the Sun SPOT World website for more information. We also have an active forum.

The hardware designs can be downloaded from https://spots-hardware.dev.java.net. The content available for download (subversion) are the schematics (pdf, Altium), bill of materials (Excel), assembly drawings (pdf), fabrication drawings (pdf), PC design files (Altium) and gerber files (RS274X) for these boards.

One interesting idea: "... it might be powerful enough to charge up a dead automotive lead acid battery after a few minutes of string pulling to start a car. Such a device might be small enough to fit into a car’s glove box ..."

"Virtual" USB Keyboard/Mouse System

"Virtual" USB Keyboard/Mouse System - Use your laptop as a keyboard/mouse for another computer. "This project is a computer interface that will allow you to hook up your computer to another computer--for example, a "headless" computer-- as a USB device, and use your laptop as a keyboard/mouse on the other machine.

There are 2 mini-USB connectors on this device. One side plugs into your laptop, the other side plugs into the computer without a keyboard. You type on the laptop, and the results will appear on the other machine. It will require special software on the laptop-side, but the destination computer should not require special drivers."

Public Lab

"SkyShield AutoKAP Controller" "The SkyShield ... is an open-source custom circuit board which is a "shield" for an Arduino Nano. ... With a connected camera ... e.g., a CHDK-enabled PowerShot ... you can capture aerial photos to stitch into high resolution panoramas ..."

The WheeStat is an open source potentiostat. A potentiostat measures electrochemically active compounds and microbes in water.

Thermal Flashlight: a simple, cheap, and effective way of measuring heat leaks or cool leaks. Thermal photography using an Arduino, a single-pixel thermometer, etc. for an order of magnitude less cost than other thermal cameras.

Other Lists of Semi-Open Projects

Super OSD is an on screen display generator; it adds text to PAL and NTSC video signals. Automatic detection of input video signal format (PAL or NTSC). Currently supports 192x128 outlined OSD on a dsPIC33FJ128GP802 (can be prototyped on a breadboard in a DIP28 package.) [21]. Open software and open hardware. (Apparently there are two supported boards, one with a dsPIC33F and a PIC24F, another with two PIC32 microcontrollers).

demo board and microcontroller alternatives lists a bunch of "small PCBs" (is there a better name?) designed for hacking and prototyping, that already have the processor and a few other super-common things built in ... so you don't have to start *completely* from scratch.

PICList & JAL_List free PCB contest "this will encourage people to publish designs and get more good ideas out into the real world for everyone to see." (So, are these "open" circuits?)

http://ePanorama.net/ has a bunch of schematics and a web discussion forum. Are they "open" enough to mention here?

"Yet Another One-hand Keyboard" ( http://chordite.com/ ) "The firmware included in the download lets an Atmel AVR '2313 microcontroller interpret chords and talk to a PS/2 port." -- it's not completely open, but the license allows you to immediately download, for free, lots of technical information and a license to build up to 5 of your own. Building more than 5 requires some sort of payment to license the patent on the hardware configuration. (The software appears to be open source). There seems to be an associated Yahoo mailing list. What is an appropriate way to invite John W. McKown and others on the mailing list to use a wiki such as Open Circuits to maintain a FAQ?

GSM SMS Controllers ( http://www.elektronika.ba/503/gsm-controller-v2/ ) "TwoWay Thing (GSM Controller v3) is a device that allows you to control appliances using SMS messages. There are also 4 inputs for connecting sensors so the device will send an alarm SMS or even call you to report an alarm condition. The device draws very little current and is being powered by phone’s battery which is a great thing. Nokia should be constantly charged or supplied with some sort of external power for long term operation."

Phone-call alarm alert ( http://www.elektronika.ba/505/phone-call-alerter/ ) "After programming just supply power to the device. After pressing the button "Pokreni dojavu alarma" it will start to dial (tone or pulse, depending on the jumper setup). When the phone call is succesfully established, the called party should press pound key "#" to stop the device from calling another number or again."

SMS Box ( http://www.elektronika.ba/563/sms-box-project/ ) "This device acts as interface between your microcontroller project and a GSM phone. It handles all modem data communication between the GSM phone and your micro-project. The best thing is that it decodes PDU into TEXT on the fly!"

Raphaël Assénat has posted several electronics projects, including schematics. Several of them involve interfacing various "classic" video game controllers to USB. His "Caller Id decoder" is a nice example of adding just one more feature to something using a minimum of additional electronics.